Just the other day, I had someone on a listserv ask whether they should send their interviews to a transcription service to be transcribe. You may not know this, but transcription is a service offered by our company. Because of that, I thought I would respond to the questions with some of my experiences. I’ve posted my response here for any researchers who are considering the same question.
This is a great question, and in my mind it seems to come down to three things: what time do you have to sacrifice, how much money are you willing to spend, and in what way would you like to get to know your data intimately. As an employee of a company that does transcriptions, I’ve gotten to see researchers struggle through this decision in the past, so I will pass on some of what I have learned.
